Had an interesting battle last night, so I thought I'd share it. The players were facing an Arrow Demon, a nasty bugger from Tan'ar'i. He's got Resist 10 fire, cold, acid, is immune to poison, electricity. He has four arms, and has a special ability to use two bows independantly at full attack each. This works out to his ability to lay out 6 attacks per round with his rapid shot feat, two base attacks, and two bows. He was accompanied by a bard singing about his feats of might and skill, and a few lesser demons.

On the other side were the players, a Warforged fighter killing machine equipped with a keen-edged greatsword, a descent archer, a cleric, and a specialist wizard.

You'd think this would be a tough fight, but this is how it played out: Within the first couple rounds the wizard got off a glitterdust spell, and with great luck penetrated the spell resistance of the demon. Both the demon and the bard were blinded (The demon rolled a 1 for his saving throw). A blinded archer is pretty much useless, and the spell lasted for 7 turns.

So while the Warforged charged through the minor demons like they were butter, the Arrow demon did the only thing it could do to wait out the blindness... climbed a tree. He didn't want to stumble around on the ground, he didn't know the forest well enough to use his Dimension door ability blind, so there he was, climbing the tree to avoid the buzzsaw below. He did attempt to summon help as Demons do, but failed in that as well.

After cleaning up the others, the players gathered around the base of the tree pelting the demon, and he got a couple lucky shots shooting towards the ground. But then the players changed tack... they burned and hacked at the tree, and within a round it was falling. A quick roll and it was falling away from the players, and the demon fell with it. His DR soaked up the damage, but there he was, extracting himself from a fallen tree, blind and surrounded.

The blindness wore off finally, and the Demon got one full attack off with his sonic weapon enhanced large bow, doing 54 damage to the warforged before the cleric barely pierced his DR for 1 damage, the last of his 135 hitpoints.

tesral

01-11-2008, 09:27 AM

Sometimes you eat the bear, sometimes the bear eats you.

Maelstrom

01-11-2008, 11:06 AM

I had a whole set of cadences the bard would use to cheer on the Demon, but being blinded within one round, blasted by a holy spell by the cleric the next round, and walking around blind and nearly dead a couple other rounds before the fighter mopped him up, the last couple were pretty pitiful.

Just before round 1
Bard: "Who's the greatest king of Bow?"
Other demons, chanting the name of the Arrow Demon: "Kazoo! Kazoo!"

Round 3
Bard: "Uh, um, who will pierce you through the heart?"
Bard: "..."
Bard: "Anyone?"
Swearengine, the Warforged death machine: "Swearengine!"

Riftwalker

01-11-2008, 11:11 AM

I had a whole set of cadences the bard would use to cheer on the Demon, but being blinded within one round, blasted by a holy spell by the cleric the next round, and walking around blind and nearly dead a couple other rounds before the fighter mopped him up, the last couple were pretty pitiful.
I'm strangely reminded of Sir Robin and his minstrels:

"When danger reared its ugly head, He bravely turned his tail and fled."